James Irvine

Personal Statement

My area of interest is resource management and security for wireless communication systems. In over 20 years at Strathclyde, I have co-authored 3 books, 7 patents and over 120 research papers, and worked on a very wide variety of projects, from consultancy for multi-national wireless operators to small local businesses, and working on small scale circuit design to giving evidence as an expert witness. For much of the past 15 years, I was an Academic Co-ordinator for research programmes in the Mobile VCE consortium of universities, operators and manufacturers, including ‘Software Based Systems’, the ‘Personal Distributed Environment’, and ‘Instant Knowledge’ - secure context-aware networks. I am currently Vice-Chair of the User Needs and Requirements Working Group of the Wireless World Research Forum, and am General Co-chair of IEEE VTC2015-Spring in Glasgow.

I am active volunteer in IEEE, currently chairing the Standards Education Committee and Conference Publications Committee, and well as being Vice-President for Publications of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. A Board member since 2002, I was VTS President 2008-9, and was a member of Educational Activities Board chairing the web portals Editorial Board and then Strategy Committee 2010-3.

On the teaching side, I am Course Director of the Computer and Electronic Systems degree which is run jointly by the EEE and Computer Science departments, which is quite appropriate as I studied on a similar inter-faculty course as an undergraduate.

Expertise & Capabilities

Radio Resource Management;

Error Control Coding;

Wireless System Design;

4G, 3G and 2G Wireless Systems;

Wireless Sensor Networks;

Wireless Health Monitoring;

Security Protocols for Wireless Networks;

Communications for Power Networks;

Privacy

Research Interests

Mobile communications has been my main area of research, with specific application to mobility, resource management and coding. However, over the past few years I have been building up work in applications of mobile systems, in particular to assistive technologies and smart homes, and related and more general aspects of system security and privacy, in collaboration with Royal Holloway University of London. An important application of these technologies is in short range wireless networks (Personal Networks/Sensor Networks) between user devices, and a number of research programmes are now targeting this area with applications in health, system monitoring and vehicular networks.

Teaching Interests

This module teaches advanced microcontroller and embedded system design, including assembly language, real time operating systems, and advanced interfacing. At the end of this course students must construct a stand-alone product, capable of working independently of the development system. Assessment is by project.

This module provides a foundation in communications theory, including information theory, coding theory, a background in discrete mathematics, algebraic coding theory, before investigating cryptographic techniques and protocols. Assessment is by coursework and exam.

EE805: Communications for Power Networks (Masters level module, CDT)

The aim of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to develop a conceptual framework for analysing different communication networks used within the power industry (e.g. LANs, WANs, wireless networks and Internet). The course also introduces and discusses Industry standards as well as operational aspect of communications networks.

EE812: Cyber Security and Data Privacy (Masters level module, CDT)

The aim of this course is to provide students with an insight into the security requirements of power networks, the basic security primitives which can be used to provide protection to these networks, and and understanding of user security and privacy. The course covers the application of security processes to power networks and components, and also discusses case studies of attacks on industrial networks.